If Lancashire has many of the characteristics of an independent nation, is there no other part of England which in recent times has developed characteristics of its own? Yes, there is the great nation of London, more populous than Scotland, Holland, or Switzerland, and destined to surpass Belgium in population before the end of the century. In London the English character has certainly undergone a great and astonishing modification. London is geographically in England, but intellectually one can only say that it is in the world. A provincial coming to London has not quitted the island, yet otherwise he hardly knows where he is. At first he does not belong to the place at all; after some experience of it he finds out whether he belongs to London naturally or not--that is to say, whether there is the degree of adaptability in him which may enable him to breathe the open intellectual atmosphere of the place. Physically, London may be as big as Loch Lomond; socially and intellectually, it is larger than Russia, and may well form, not only a county by itself, but a state within the State. I have said that in London the English character has undergone a modification. It has become more open, more tolerant, better able to understand variety of opinion, and much more ready to appreciate talent and welcome thought of all kinds. The nation of London is essentially modern and democratic, not caring who your grandmother may have been if only you yourself are to its taste; but at the same time it does not desire to be a coarse and uneducated democracy; it values culture and taste far too highly to sacrifice them to a low equality. In a word, London clings to its own standard of civilisation. If you come up to that standard, if you have refinement and just money enough for housekeeping of unpretending elegance, you may be an infidel and a radical, yet London will not disown you, London will not cast you out into the cold. [Sidenote: London not Insular.] [Sidenote: Number of Travellers in London.] Although London happens by chance to be situated on an island it is not insular. The nation of London is of all nations the most cosmopolitan, the most alive to what is passing everywhere upon the earth. It seems there as if one were not living so much the life of a nation as the world’s life. You speak of some outlandish place at a London dinner-table, and are never surprised if somebody present quietly gives a description of it from personal knowledge. There are more people in London who have travelled and are ready to start on travels than in any other place on the whole earth. It is there that all the ocean telegraphs converge and steamers are arriving daily from all parts of the world. Switzerland is London’s playground, Cannes and Nice are its winter garden, and so comprehensive do our ideas become in London that those places seem actually nearer to us there than they do in the heart of France. [Sidenote: Effects of the Railway System.]